Startup companies in the us
Editor’s note: Aileen Lee is founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage fund that backs entrepreneurs reinventing work and personal life through software. Previously, she joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1999 and was also founding CEO of digital media company RMG Networks, backed by KPCB. Follow her on Twitter @aileenlee.
Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.
Why do investors seem to care about “billion dollar exits”? Historically, top venture funds have driven returns from their ownership in just a few companies in a given fund of many companies. Plus, traditional venture funds have grown in size, requiring larger “exits” to deliver acceptable returns.
For example – to return just the initial capital of a 0 million venture fund, that might mean needing to own 20 percent of two different $1 billion companies, or 20 percent of a $2 billion company when the company is acquired or goes public.
So, we wondered, as we’re a year into our new fund (which doesn’t need to back billion-dollar companies to succeed, but hey, we like to learn): how likely is it for a startup to achieve a billion-dollar valuation? Is there anything we can learn from the mega hits of the past decade, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Workday?
To answer these questions, the Cowboy Ventures team built a dataset of U.S.-based tech companies started since January 2003 and most recently valued at $1 billion by private or public markets. We call it our “Learning Project, ” and it’s ongoing.
With big caveats that 1) our data is based on publicly available sources, such as CrunchBase, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia, and 2) it is based on a snapshot in time, which has definite limitations, here is a summary of what we’ve learned, with more explanation following this list*:
Learnings to date about the “Unicorn Club”:
- We found 39 companies belong to what we call the “Unicorn Club” (by our definition, U.S.-based software companies started since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors). That’s about .07 percent of venture-backed consumer and enterprise software startups.
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Q&A
Can a US employer hire non-US based people?
In this information age where all you need is an internet connection, can a startup company based in US hire someone based in another country, say Germany? * The company doesn't have any presence in Germany.
If yes, how does the tax deduction work? Will the person pay taxes in US or Germany?
A US company can sponsor your work visa. There are rules and laws to this and they have questions to answer themselves to get your visa like "yes, we posted a local search and can find nobody else with these skills we need."
If you work in the US, you will pay taxes to the US and to the state you work in.
Can an international student be a co-founder in a startup/company in the US? - Quora
Questions of this sort come up frequently (I have helped approximately 30 foreign clients start up businesses in the U.S.).
Short answer: While on the F-1, you can hold passive investments in a company. This means you can form (incorporate) it, own shares (you do not necessarily need a co-owner), and probably be on the board of directors (if the board takes only a management role, rather than
